Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist
* Package name : dvi2bitmap Version : 0.13 Upstream Author : Norman Gray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * URL : https://sourceforge.net/projects/dvi2bitmap/ * License : GPL Description : library and application to rapidly generate bitmaps from TeX DVI files (Include the long description here.) dvi2bitmap is a utility to convert TeX DVI files directly to bitmaps, without going through the complicated (and slow!) route of conversion via PostScript and PNM. The prime motivation for this is to prepare mathematical equations for inclusion in HTML files, but there is a broad range of uses beyond that. dvi2bitmap is written in portable C++, and the program acts as a wrapper round the libdvi2bitmap library (both static and shareable), which abstracts DVI and PK files and their contents, Bitmaps, and various other objects supporting these. The library has extensive API documentation, and is intended to be useful for other projects. It can generate XBM, XPM and GIF bitmaps, plus PNG, if you have the libpng library installed. Uses the same kpathsea font-searching library as other TeX programs, again as long as you have the appropriate library installed. I'm the author of the upstream package, but regrettably don't feel I can commit right now to creating and maintaining the Debian package. A few hours with the New Maintainer's Guide and dh_make tells me that I can probably hack together the beginnings of a package, but also that it would take more time than I can responsibly commit right now to produce a package that would actually be submittable. Also, the package in question contains -- indeed is primarily -- a library: the New Maintainer's Guide advises against such a thing being one's first package, and the Library Packaging Guide at <http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/column/libpkg-guide/libpkg-guide.html> is intimidatingly long. The current dvi2bitmap release uses autoconf, automake and libtool to do its work. It's currently built nightly on a half-dozen architectures including Debian 3.0r3 on i386. I hope it would, therefore, be relatively easy to package for someone who knows (or is looking to practise) the library voodoo, and any portability problems I'd take as upstream bugs and fix and rerelease as soon as possible. If it's possible to include the debian/ materials in the current repository, so that I can generate .deb packages as part of the normal release procedure, or if there's anything else I can do to facilitate this, I'd be delighted to do it. I wish I could do more, but my brain's rather full just now. Here's hoping someone wants a guinea pig.... All the best, Norman http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-k7 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.iso88591 (charmap=ISO-8859-1) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
